A cable raceway is a system used for the protection and routing of cables, including power cables, data cables, and any other electrical cables. A cable raceway can be mounted to a wall, a ceiling, and/or on or under a floor, to direct cables to various points within a building (e.g., different rooms) or to various points within a room (e.g., to different servers etc. located within the same room). A cable raceway may be made of metal, plastic, fiber, or fired clay.
In order for cables (e.g., data cables, power cables etc.) to travel through a raceway, the cables must enter and exit at various point throughout the raceway to connect various devices together. For example, a data cable may begin at a networking switch, enter the raceway, travel through the raceway to another location in the room, exit the location at that point, and connect to a server. As a raceway will often contain multiple cables, a raceway may have multiple entrances and exits to access multiple devices located near the path of the raceway.
While the location of the various components within a room or a building may be known, the specific locations in the raceway where an entrance or exit may need to be located may not be known until the raceway has been installed. Thus, the various entrances and exits in the raceway may not be created or even known, until after the raceway has been installed, and the exact location of the entrances and exits can be determined. Therefore, it is common for ad-hoc entrances and exits to be created in the raceway after the raceway has been installed.
Currently, there are various types of ad-hoc entrances and exits depending on the type of raceway used. For example, if the raceway is a runway or ladder raceway (e.g., Raceway 1205 of FIG. 12), the cable can either be run through an opening in the floor of the raceway, or simply placed over the side of the raceway. However, such ad-hoc openings are disadvantageous because: 1) if the cable is run through the opening in the floor of the raceway, the angle (e.g., bend) in the cable can be so substantial as to snap or break the cable, or render the cable useless for its intended purpose (e.g., if the cable is an optical cable, a sharp bend can prevent a glass fiber in the cable from completely reflecting a light signal, resulting in degradation or loss of the signal or can cause a glass fiber within the cable to develop fractures), and 2) if the cable is simply placed over the side of the raceway, there is nothing preventing the entire cable from being pulled over the side of the raceway, negating the purpose of having a raceway.
If the raceway is a wire or tray raceway (e.g., Raceway 1105 of FIG. 11), the cable can be run through an opening in the floor of the raceway or an opening in the side of the raceway. While this can solve the problem of ensuring that the cable stays in the raceway until the exit, nothing prevents a cable from making a sharp bend having a small bend radius at an exit point, and such bends can break or reduce the performance of the cable. For a tray raceway (e.g., channel raceway 350 of FIG. 3), one can make a cable exit by simply routing it over a side wall of the raceway, or by cutting an opening into the side of the raceway for the cables to enter and exit. However, as is the case with a ladder raceway and a wire raceway, a channel raceway, by itself, cannot prevent a cable from developing a sharp bend at the exit point.
Attachment devices have been proposed that attempt to cure the problems above. For example, FIG. 1 shows a raceway attachment 100 designed to attach to a raceway 150. Raceway attachment 100 has a bend 105 in a direction parallel to the direction the cables are run through the raceway. Raceway attachment 100 also has a bend 110 in a direction perpendicular to the direction the cables are run through raceway 150. As the cables travel through the raceway, they bend around bend 105, and over bend 110 to exit the raceway. Sides 115 help maintain the cables in raceway attachment 100, and separation mechanism 120, through hook 125, separates the cables that exit raceway 150 from the cables passing by raceway attachment 100. While raceway attachment 100 can prevent some cables from bending to the point of breaking, raceway attachment 100 has many problems. First, in order to prevent the cables from breaking, the cable must be run under bend 105 and over bend 110. However, there is nothing that maintains the cable in such a position, and the cable can easily bypass bend 105, to run over bend 110, which can still result in an unacceptably sharp bend in the cable. Additionally, raceway attachment 100 only protects a cable exiting raceway 150 in a downward direction, and as such, cannot be used if the cable exits the raceway in upward or sideways directions. Further, raceway attachment 100 is constructed to attach only to a tray raceway, and lacks the versatility to attach to different types of raceways such as ladder raceways or wire raceways. Moreover, raceway attachment 100 must be fastened to the raceway using a fastener as it cannot support itself. Finally, raceway attachment 100 is expensive and difficult to manufacture due to the various bends and sides needed to protect the cables.
Thus, it may be beneficial to provide an exemplary cable guide that is easy and inexpensive to manufacture, that can easily be installed on any raceway type, that protects a cable entering or exiting in any direction, and that can overcome at least some of the deficiencies described herein above.